[Socadl = Adelaide’s social media community. Kind of like a tweet-up gang for people who are socmedia enthusiasts].

Yes, this is Prakky’s blog. Socadl doesn’t have a blog space and Prakky organises most of Socadl: so, welcome!

This month Socadl celebrated its third year on Twitter so it’s probably time for our first reflective post. Enjoy this year in review:

Our first official event was Tweatre, where the Socadl gang headed to The Maid Hotel to take part in the Adelaide Fringe show where the audience tweets what it would like the cast to enact. We helped the show to trend in Adelaide that night and the cast enjoyed drinks with us in the beer garden afterward.

Next up, we had a swarm attempt for international Four Square Day, with Socadl members congregating at the Malls Balls in Adelaide’s city centre. (And no, we didn’t achieve the necessary 50 check ins required for an official Foursquare swarm. Next time, Foursquare, next time!).

Grace Bellavue spoke to us in March on “How new media is driving the adult industry” in a presentation that was delightfully NSFW and in May, members Vern Schulz and Mikael Liddy organised a winter’s meet up at Suzie Wong’s Room. Not everyone was sure about the eye patches, but thanks guys … 😉

We celebrated international Social Media Day by watching the CJ Podcast team (Jason Neave, Mal Chia and Sarah Thomas) on stage at the Crown and Sceptre [listen to the podcast here].  Thanks Ben Teoh for being MC that night. [And Vale, Crown and Sceptre].

In September, Orren Puncken talked to us about StartUp Adelaide and Alison Kershaw introduced the South Australian Government site ForwardIT. Big thanks to Ashlee Baghurst for being our MC that night, and thanks to Katie Hannan who organised the venue.

Last month we had a blast at the Adelaide City Council’s new Digital Hub, with the generous support of wine sponsor Lazy Ballerina. We listened to Katherine Shaw (of the Adelaide City Council’s InnovationLab), and Susan Rooney-Harding and Zoe Dreschler (Adelaide City Council’s Digital Hub). Thanks to Michael Roelink for being MC (and the last cog in the Adelaide City Council wheel) and to Dan Popping for the great idea.

Next week, we’ll congregate at the new Franklin Hotel in the city centre for some casual and well-earned Christmas drinks. Please come along!

Throughout all this, of course, our #socadl tweetstream has been thriving. Every day it’s a collection of social media questions, answers, support and opinion.

Now: to the results of our Socadl 2012 survey.

We had 34 respondents. Thank you to those who took the time – and what a good Socadl crowd you are. A bit over half (55.9%) said they’d been to 1-3 Socadl events this year and more than 82% said they took part in the #socadl tweet conversation.

Most respondents said they liked what they liked most about Socadl was “meeting others and socialising casually”.

This motivation was carried through with the next question about what people want from Socadl next year. Most said they wanted more casual social events, followed closely by more local speakers and case studies.

We had a fantastic 19 responses to the open-field question about future Socadl topics, which ranged from seeking advice on crisis management and the legalities behind social media, through to apps and advertising and mobile. These will go into our ‘ideas pool’.

There were 3 final comments, with one respondent stating that Socadl speakers “come from a rather narrow pool” and perhaps we could have more who aren’t in PR and marketing. The list of events above is a reminder of the breadth of speakers we had;  however perhaps we do tend to have a marketing/PR perspective with our #socadl tweetstream. This is very much community-influenced and we’d welcome more voices and perspectives.

Thanks to the respondent who complimented Socadl on our activity:

Finally, a big THANK YOU to everyone who’s participated in Socadl this year. Looking forward to seeing you this Tuesday 18 December if you can make it. Please feel free to share more feedback below.